New Discoveries in the Pan Grotto in Paneas
May 2025 | Vol. 13.5
By Adi Erlich and Ron Lavi
Travelers who visit the springs of Paneas in the Hermon Stream Nature Reserve in Northern Israel, at the foot of Mt. Hermon, are amazed by the cliff, water, and forest scenery. However, the most impressive feature of that landscape is a big natural cave on the cliff, which, during the Hellenistic and Roman periods, was associated with the cult of Pan, the god of the wild and shepherds.
Fig. 1. Aerial view of the Paneas cultic complex, looking north (Photo by D. Gahali).
The name of the place, Paneas or Paneion (today after the Arabic: Banyas), is named after this cult. During the Hellenistic period, this cult place was initiated. According to Josephus Flavius, Herod the Great built a temple there to his benefactor, Augustus, near the cave. According to his account, the cave was full of water:
“Herod there too dedicated to him (Augustus) a temple of white marble near the sources of the Jordan, at a place called Paneion. At this spot a mountain rears its summit to an immense height aloft; at the base of the cliff is an opening into an overgrown cavern; within this, plunging down to an immeasurable depth, is a yawning chasm, enclosing a volume of still water, the bottom of which no sounding-line has been found long enough to reach.”
Today the cave is usually dry, only filling up occasionally during rainy times.
Fig. 2. Pan cave at Paneas in the rainy winter of 2020, looking northwest. (Photo by A. Erlich).
Fig. 3. Map showing the location of Paneas. Created by Sapr Haad.
Herod’s son, Philip, erected a new city called Caesarea (Philippi) at Paneas. Philip’s nephew, Agrippa I, inherited his uncle’s territories, including Caesarea Philippi, but it was his son, Agrippa II, who turned it back into the capital of his kingdom. After Agrippa’s death toward the end of the 1st century C.E., Caesarea Philippi was transferred to the province of Syria.
Zvi Maʻoz excavated the terrace at the foot of the cliff on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority in the 1990s. He discovered a series of shrines, temples, and courtyards that developed on the terrace throughout the Roman period. He left the Pan cave almost unexcavated, except for boulders taken out of the cave, and a niche wall west of its forepart. Maʻoz maintained that this wall — with alternating five square and rounded niches — was the wall of the Augustus temple built by Herod, the cave being its rear part and the holy of the holies. Thus, the sign for visitors in the nature reserve reconstructed a white Roman temple in front of the cave, hiding it from the visitors approaching the site.
In the past decade, this niche wall has started to collapse, and to support it and allow for its conservation, we were invited by the Israel Nature and Parks Authority to conduct a dig on behalf of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology at the University of Haifa. What started as a small salvage dig developed into a three-year project in the years 2019-2021, during COVID-19, which was full of surprises. Today, we can tell that there was no temple in front of the cave, and throughout the Roman period, the cave with its deep pool was visible to the eye and was a prominent feature of the local landscape, as it is today.
Fig. 4. Pan cave at Paneas and the excavated area, looking north: A – the cave and the rock; B – the aqueduct; C- the small pool; D – the niche walls (Photo by D. Gahali).
Fig. 5. The central part of the aqueduct, looking north (Photo by A. Erlich).
The first feature that was built at the place was a large underground aqueduct with a gabled roof, which drained water from the cave southward, and was exposed for a length of 22.5 meters (Fig. 4B, Fig. 5). The aqueduct kept the water in the cave to a level that would not flood the complex, and it kept the tip of a massive rock at the center of the cave, which is still visible today (see Fig. 2 and Fig. 4A), exposed at all times. Over the aqueduct, the courtyard was built: it was composed of two niche walls on the west and east, of the latter only one niche survived (Fig. 6, Fig. 4D), a small pool at the center in front of the cave (Fig. 4C), and a strip between the cave and the small pool, separated from the main hall by small columns and flanked by two square niches. Small water installations and channels were built near the pool. Not much was left of the floor, which was made of stone slabs laid on gray cement.
Fig. 6. The western niche wall exposed by Maʻoz, looking west (Photo by M. Eisenberg).
Fig. 7. The square niche at the east side of the strip near the cave (Photo by M. Eisenberg).
This courtyard in front of a cave full of water and flanked by niche walls was constructed in the last third of the 1st century CE, according to archaeological evidence (coins, pottery, and the radiometric date of the aqueduct’s plaster). Thus, we attribute it to Agrippa II, the last king of the Herodian dynasty. According to Flavius Josephus, Caesarea-Philippi was Agrippa’s favorite city, which he embellished. After the Romans suppressed the Jewish revolt in 70 CE, he invited Titus and his troops to watch games in which Jewish prisoners were executed (Jewish War, 7: 23–24, 37–38). Later on, Agrippa II, who spent his early life in Rome, returned to Rome with his sister, Queen Berenice, where he was awarded the ornamenta praetoria (clothing and social privileges of a praetor of a senatorial order), as recognition for his contribution to the victory of the Romans over the Jews (Cassius Dio, Roman History, 66.15.3–4).
Agrippa’s upbringing in Rome is essential for understanding the architecture of the complex at Paneas. It is shaped as a standard feature of that time in Rome and Italy: Triclinium–Nymphaeum in front of a grotto, for dining and entertainment in an imposing scenery. There are a few examples of such complexes with a natural or artificial cave dating to the Early Empire, like the one at Baia near Naples or at Castelgandolfo south of Rome, but the closest parallel is the Imperial triclinium–Nymphaeum at Sperlonga, on the coast halfway between Rome and Naples, known as Tiberius’ villa (although it was erected before his time). Sperlonga combined wild and tame elements: the sea, fishponds, a triclinium, an impressive grotto on a cliff, and sculptural groups. The resemblance between the complexes of Sperlonga and Paneas is striking. It seems that Agrippa II, who grew up at the emperors’ courts and knew these Italian lavish triclinia, wished to build for himself a little Italy in the Levant.
Fig. 8. The caves of Sperlonga (above) and Paneas (below). (Photos by the authors and D. Gahali).
After Agrippa’s death, by the end of the 1st century CE, Paneas was incorporated into the province of Syria. The courtyard returned to its original use, as an open cult place, probably to the god Pan. From this phase, we have plenty of marble slabs, nicely modeled cornices on the big niches (Fig. 9), and altars along the western niche wall. One of the altars, which was found embedded in a later wall and its precise origin is obscure, carried an inscription to Pan-Zeus Heliopolitanes, dedicated by a worshipper from Antioch (Fig. 10). The massive rock in the cave likely carried a statue of the god, as shown in some of the coins of Caesarea Philippi (Fig. 11). Alternatively, it held an altar that seemed to be floating on the water, like in Syrian sacred pools, such the Hellenistic temple at Amrith, or the Roman cult place at Hierapolis described by Lucian (de Syria Dea, 45–47).
Fig. 9. One of the cornices found in the collapse near the square niche at the eastern side of the strip (Photo by Adi Erlich).
Fig. 10. Altar dedicated to Pan-Zeus, found in a secondary use inside a Byzantine wall. (Photo by O. Shinʻar).
Fig. 11. Coin of Caesarea Philippi under Elagabalus, 3rd century CE. Drawn by Sapir Haad.
Eusebius tells about rituals of divination that took place at Paneas in the late 3rd or early 4th century CE, where a sacrifice would be thrown into the water, and if rejected by the god, it would appear further down the springs (Ecclesiastical History, 7.17). Similar ceremonies of hydromancy, i.e., divination by water, also took place in the cult place at Afqa in Lebanon, east of Byblos, as described by Zosimus (New History 1.58). Afqa resembles Paneas greatly (Fig. 12). Thus, the cult in front of the Paneas cave and its pool probably involved different rituals such as the Pan cult, hydromancy, and perhaps more.
Fig. 12. Afqa in Lebanon. (Photo by iStock 1303281585, credit – JossK).
In sum, the Paneas cave witnessed changes in function and its modeling, from the cultic to the royal and back to cultic, and from a wild place to a built complex. It has been, and still is, a significant feature in the local landscape. Today, some of its secrets are revealed.
Adi Erlich is Associate Professor of Archaeology and Art History at the University of Haifa and a Researcher at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology.
Ron Lavi is an Adjunct Researcher at the Zinman Institute of Archaeology, University of Haifa.
Their article, “Dine and Worship: The Roman Complex in Front of the Pan Grotto in Paneas/Caesarea Philippi” recently appeared in the journal BASOR.
Excavations at Paneas were undertaken on behalf of the Zinman Institute of Archaeology.
Further Reading:
Berlin, A. 2015. Herod, Augustus, and the Augusteum at the Panion. Eretz-Israel 31: 1–11.
Erlich, A. and Lavi, R. 2024. Dine and Worship: The Roman Complex in front of the Pan Grotto in Paneas/Caesarea Philippi. Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 392: 207:237.
Maʻoz, Z. 2009. Baniyas, the Roman Temples. Archaostyle Scientific Research Series 8. Qazrin: Archaostyle.
Lavi, R. and Erlich, A. 2024. A Newly Discovered Aqueduct at Paneas. Israel Exploration Journal 74/2: 80-101. https://doi.org/10.1086/731707
Wilson, J. F. 2004. Caesarea Philippi: Banias, the Lost City of Pan. London and New York: I. B. Tauris.
How to cite this article:
Erlich, A. and R. Lavi. 2025. “New Discoveries in the Pan Grotto in Paneas.” The Ancient Near East Today 13.5. Accessed at: https://anetoday.org/pan-grotto-paneas/.
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